www-chrbutler-com-tatc86.txt (4982B)
1 [1] Christopher Butler ☼ 2 3 [2]Archive 4 5 [3]Info 6 7 [4]Now 8 9 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 10 11 Periodical 17 — Optimization 12 13 Optimizing a home is a years-long process. 14 15 [2ecf691b-e250-4506-b824-b2076088b38f] 16 17 Hello from the corner of our home. The sun is setting on what has been a rainy 18 but lovely day. We had a brief visit from some friends; my daughter spent a 19 couple of hours learning pottery from our neighbor, who is a master potter; my 20 son romped in puddles and came home a soggy raisin. We are about to enjoy a 21 glass of wine with dinner. 22 23 – 24 25 We’ve lived in this house for 11 years now. Each year, we find ways to better 26 inhabit it. 27 28 Optimizing a home is a years-long process. You must closely watch for patterns 29 in how you move about it; how you use things within it; how surfaces wear and 30 age; how light and dark, heat and cold come and go; how things sound. 31 32 The pandemic, of course, set in motion a lot of optimization. We had never 33 spent so much time in the house, and we had never been as many as we were by 34 2021, when our second child was born. Our 1,900 square foot house offers us 35 enough space, but with four humans and a dog, space is at a premium. So I have 36 been optimizing. We have an only-somewhat-said-in-jest motto here — spoken in 37 the rhythm of Glengarry Glen Ross — always be optimizing. 38 39 Recently, I did more optimizing. 40 41 First, I finished framing and mounting acoustic panels to the ceiling of our 42 office. The entire project is still not entirely finished — I need to re-paint 43 the ceiling — but I’m very happy with the results so far. It sounds great in 44 here. When you walk in, you can hear it — feel it — right away. It’s like being 45 in an isolation tank; it offers a warm silence. 46 47 [f6379286-e573-4c00-80c3-28eb069724c7] 48 49 Next, I created a tool panel for the back of the office closet door. 50 51 I’m frequently reaching for tools as there’s always something to repair, 52 update, or make in this old house. It’s surprising how much of a difference it 53 makes to simply reach for it rather than squat down and rummage through a bin 54 or drawer. 55 56 [5fd2bfee-60b0-4ef8-b00f-14630f79221b] 57 58 On the outside of the door, I used a bit of extra wood and bolts to make a 59 simple — but snazzy — coat rack. 60 61 [cf26d7d1-2bc3-4528-8981-d0a2c9ecc1b5] 62 63 Who says a bolt can’t be beautiful? 64 65 Finally, after I made [5]this lamp for the desk, my old [6]cylinder lamp needed 66 a new home. 67 68 I decided to notch out some space for it on the main bookshelf in here. My son 69 and I took down the books on the third shelf, carried the board outside, 70 measured, trimmed, and sanded it, and then brought it back in — about 10 71 minutes of effort to make a perfect space for some golden light. 72 73 [6efb3fb6-10ac-4f66-a124-16d9251850bf] 74 75 As I age, I realize more and more how important craft is to me. And I do take 76 pride in improving our surroundings. But the thing I’m most proud of here is 77 that each one of these projects was something I could include my children in. 78 79 On the short list of things I hope I can teach them is the confidence to shape 80 their surroundings for the better. 81 82 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 83 84 85 Written by [7]Christopher Butler on March 9, 2024, In [8]Log 86 87 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 88 89 90 Next Entry 91 92 [9] visual journal – 2024 March 9 - March 16 Either nothing is magic or 93 everything is. (3 images) 94 95 Previous Entry 96 97 [10] object – Wooden Task Lamp I made a task lamp in just a couple of hours. 98 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 99 100 ⌨ Keep up via [11]Email or [12]RSS 101 102 ✺ [13]Impressum 103 104 © Christopher Butler. All rights reserved 105 106 107 108 References: 109 110 [1] https://www.chrbutler.com/ 111 [2] https://www.chrbutler.com/archives 112 [3] https://www.chrbutler.com/information 113 [4] https://www.chrbutler.com/now 114 [5] https://www.chrbutler.com/2024-02-24 115 [6] https://www.chrbutler.com/2023-04-24 116 [7] https://www.chrbutler.com/information 117 [8] https://www.chrbutler.com/tagged/log 118 [9] https://www.chrbutler.com/visual-journal/2024-03-09 119 [10] https://www.chrbutler.com/2024-02-24 120 [11] https://dontthinkaboutthefuture.eo.page/8y4tg 121 [12] http://chrbutler.com/feed.rss 122 [13] https://www.chrbutler.com/impressum